Government unveils new nuclear policy focused on exports and foreign investment

Javier Milei’s government has rewritten the guidelines of Argentina’s nuclear policy with the goal of prioritizing foreign investment and fostering high-value-added exports, as part of the Nuclear Plan the president launched in late 2024. The shift was unveiled on Sunday at a ceremony marking the 76th anniversary of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA). At the event, the Nuclear Affairs Secretariat Federico Ramos Npoli presented a 54-page document laying out the case for a change in direction in Argentina’s nuclear development. “Argentina has consistently produced world-class nuclear science and technology, but it hasn’t managed to turn that output into an industry of comparable scale,” the official text said. The rationale for the new policy, it argued, “stems from that asymmetry: the sector holds assets whose capitalization was never completed, and the political task is to close the gap between available capacity and actual results.” Argentina was the first Latin American country to build nuclear reactors for power generation back in the 1970s, in collaboration with the German firm Siemens. It is currently a regional leader in nuclear technology alongside Brazil, with three nuclear plants in operation: Atucha I, Atucha II and Embalse, generating a combined 1,641 megawatts.  Bringing in dollars as the main goal The government noted that Argentina “belongs to the restricted group of countries around 15 worldwide that have command of the entire nuclear fuel cycle.” According to the Nuclear Affairs Secretariat, that amounts to a structural comparative advantage, a rare commodity in the Argentine economy. For that reason, the secretariat set out four ranked objectives for the sector. The first is the development of high-value-added nuclear exports. Second comes energy security. Third, the preservation and development of national technological capabilities. And last, regional leadership and geopolitical positioning. In practical terms, that means the main criterion for moving forward with projects and investments in the nuclear sector is their capacity to generate revenue. The document itself makes clear that when two of those objectives come into tension, the higher-ranked one prevails. The interest in uranium “Argentina must establish itself as a key player in the global supply chain for nuclear technology. This objective leads the sector hierarchy and serves as the guiding criterion for the full set of investment and resource allocation decisions,” said the office headed by Ramos Napoli, a figure close to presidential adviser Santiago Caputo. The secretariat also previewed on Sunday the priorities for the next 18 months: operating the nuclear plants and extending the working life of Atucha I; bringing the RA-10 multipurpose reactor online; positioning the country in the nuclear fuel cycle; modernizing the regulatory framework; training professionals; and regional leadership. Argentina has companies along every stage of the nuclear energy value chain except for uranium mining, which shut down in the late 1990s after the international price of the commodity collapsed. A week earlier, Caputo himself posted on X that “there can’t be many things more important for the history of our nation than pulling out the 300,000 tons of uranium we have underground.” That figure was later disputed by mining experts, who said the actual amount is 10 times smaller. The presidential adviser also said Chubut the province where the uranium reserves are located “could be the next Neuqun,” a reference to the gas and oil deposits of Vaca Muerta. A plan without projects The guidelines, however, do not translate into concrete projects. The text itself clarifies that it “does not constitute a nuclear plan in the specific sense the word ‘plan’ takes on in public management: a timetable of executive actions with assigned resources, set deadlines and clear responsibilities.” The document came out a year and a half after Milei presented the Nuclear Plan alongside Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the goal of building four small modular reactors at Atucha using the ACR-300 design from the technology firm INVAP. That earlier announcement, which included a “nuclear city” to supply power to artificial intelligence data centers in Patagonia, hasn’t shown any visible operational progress. The new document doesn’t explicitly mention either the original Nuclear Plan nor the nuclear city project. The driving force behind that initiative was Demian Reidel, president of the state-owned company Nucleoelctrica Argentina, who resigned in February of this year amid allegations of overpricing at the company he led.